Breakfast in Chicago
by Guardinthena
Summary: When a Fraal saves Primer from a Raet named Mace it sets off a chain of events that drives the Biker Mice to return to Mars. There they unearth the sinister secrets of the Garden of Hope and enter into a final confrontation with the true traitor of Mars.


**Author's Note**: Back in 2008 I came up with the idea for Breakfast in Chicago, a fan-based story like so many others that dealt with the Biker Mice encountering original characters of my own. The idea then was loose, a raw unshaped idea that I quickly wrote down and posted. The plot was loosely centered on the idea that the Biker Mice had to return to Mars to attend the funeral of a close comrade. After writing the first chapter I was stumped, and never continued it.

Fast forward to 2011. For the past four years I've suffered from extreme writer's block, depression, and stressful life events. Despite it all, I never could let go of my stories, particularly this one: Breakfast in Chicago. Over the years it has morphed and manifested into something enticing, an idea and story that I did not want to rush and spoil. I tentatively began a webcomic over at DeviantArt called Sol Bound that was meant to elaborate on the original characters introduced in Breakfast in Chicago, namely: Wildfire, Cartridge, Race, and Captain Carlana 'Muffles' Phoenix. The characters and plot have undergone many changes and tweaks over the years, especially the character Muffles, who originally appeared in my first posting of Breakfast in Chicago under the name of Captain Codex. Out of all of the characters, the mysterious human known as Muffles has undergone the most change in both appearance and background story.

To those who read my original posting of Breakfast in Chicago and liked it, and to those who enjoyed Sol Bound, I give you this edited, scraped, remodeled, trimmed and polished continuation-this remake-after so many long years: Breakfast in Chicago, as it was meant to be told.

* * *

**PROLOGUE:**

**PRIMER AND THE FEAAL**

Moaning like a dying man, low winds glided across the dead-still Martian landscape and stirred the rust-red sands of the rose-colored planet Mars. The whispering winds created a hazy layer of mist from dust and sand that hung over the shifting plains like a midwinter fog and tainted the alien skies from a pale blue to salmon pink before dimming to a violent crimson red. Basaltic rocks scattered across the scarred plains jutted up at extreme angles, sitting silent and forlorn as they tore at the barren alien sky. If not like claws did the basaltic rocks appear than like the crumbled heads of tombstones from an ancient graveyard. The coverage of the volcanic debris stretched on for miles and so it seemed, if any had stood to gaze over the dying world, that the whole planet was one large necropolis, endless and without borders.

The dreadful Martian moon Deimos hung heavy and full above it all, shining powerful and radiant like the star Vega against the blood bleached alien skies. To the red-rimmed moon the icy winds seemed to reach, for each time an abrupt gust would charge against a cluster of basaltic rocks it would break against them in an ensuing wave and the resulting dust and sand and soil particles would spray upwards towards the heavens–towards Deimos–with outreaching arms as though they were spirits seeking plea in release from the dying world.

A white furred Kore, one of the last remaining inhabitants of the decrepit world, sat astride her golden sporty motorcycle observing the ruined face of her home world. Her thoughts were unreadable as they lie hidden behind the pale yellow radiance projected off by her full-faced visor. Her emotions were little better interpreted as she sat rigid astride her crotch rocket, feet firmly planted in the dirt as she gripped at her shoulders in what should have been a sign of longing and comfort except with the stiffness with which she clasped herself.

As though beckoned, her attention inched slowly to a set of red-brown crags weathered by millennia's of violent sandstorms some three-point-six miles off from her given position. Sprawled out beneath the shadow of the crags there rested the broken carcass of a once magnificent Martian city now more reminiscent of the barren bones of a giant jutting out of the red earth.

"Malachite."

Winds screamed. The Kore hissed the name as it rattled up out through her throat; the word sounding coarse in her ears and reminding her of the metallic taste of blood. Sand and grit and ash and violent winds broke across her back. The Kore bent with the force of it and flattened out across the golden crotch rocket, but the wailing winds of the damned could not force her to remove her eyes from Malachite, City of Ruins.

Her gaze did glaze over and turn inwards as she hugged her alien motorcycle, clinging and trembling violently, caught between the two extremities of the empty death whispered to her on the winds of Mars and the warmth emitting from the rumbling core of the engine. The comforting heat helped take the sting out of the biting winds and, perhaps undesirably, the determined edge out of her.

For a time she contemplated turning back, leaving Malachite and abandoning the alien impulse that had seized her up and led her to travel to this forsaken place at the farthest edges of Mars. She concluded finally that only death and grief and misery could reside in Malachite.

The Kore tried to turn away but found that she could not let Malachite slip out of even her peripheral vision. She was reminded uncomfortably of how unwise it would be to leave an enemy at her backside. Ultimately, she was drawn back to the crags by a mixture of conflicting emotions that she could not explain; try as she might, the most powerful of them being trepidation and heartache –two emotions she did not suffer from readily.

The alien impulse was possessive. It seized her in her moment of doubt and despite a strike of sudden dread she revved her bike and gunned it towards Malachite. As though in warning, the ferocity of the winds increased the closer she drew. And though the Kore ignored the elements that harped her like raging souls as she roared onwards at ever increasing breakneck speeds, she quickly found that the bruised and scarred landscape was the true thing they were warning her about.

This stark realization came about when she had to make her first split second decision when she drove over a small dune and found herself directly in the path of a pit, which the dune had priorly hidden from her view. The Kore let out a noise of surprise, but if not for a quick flick of her thumb and a twist of her wrist that triggered the golden crotch rocket to release an explosion of enough kinetic force to launch her over the pit, than she would have become yet another indistinguishable smear across the Martian landscape.

The rest of the journey to Malachite's outer limits was no less dangerous.

Often and with little time to spare, the Kore found herself dodging difficult pitfalls that lied in wait beneath the roll of mists that ghosted over the plains or just behind unsuspecting dunes. More dangerous still was the dust bars that she often ploughed on through, not realizing that they were not solid masses but mere six inches and sometimes more of just dust that had settled over the area for too long a time (and often hid dangerous surprises like basalt rocks and the like). She nearly crashed several times, but the Kore's phenomenon skill with her alien motorcycle kept her on trek, sometimes if barely. Truth be told though, her near misses and continued success were all to her motorcycle's sophisticated topographical instruments. Without them she would have crashed and burned long ago. Even still, she suffered many near misses.

Hazily, the Kore knew that she should slow down, but the rush of the flight and the gamble she ran with death enticed her and kept her from clamping down on the brakes.

It was foolish.

She was stupid.

The Kore was an adrenaline junkie, and her addiction would likely get her killed one day.

This seemingly apparent realization that she could die streaking over the pitted plains like greased lightning did not seem to kick in until she was a mile out from Malachite's outermost edge, when her bike began to act up. Whether it was their proximity to the ghost city or the sandstorm itself, the delicate electrical instruments that she relied heavily on for thermal readings and three-dimensional topographical purposes began to flicker. The vid-screen on her motorcycle went blank. Her helmet's internal readings became snow. All of it became minor in comparison to the incessant beeping screeching at her from her helmet's interior audio receptors.

Where others would have cut their speed and slowed down, their stomachs twisting in panic and their brains summoning up the worse of scenarios, the Kore ignored it, knowing what the beeping was and pressed on. When it seemed evident that she would not slow down, even when faced with riding blind, the electronic beeping promptly cut out and was replaced by the eerie tunes of Riders on the Storm by the Earthling band known as Doors.

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

_Into this house we're born_

_Into this world we're thrown_

_Like a dog without a bone_

_An actor out alone_

_Riders on the storm_

Taking a cue from the eerie tunes where she would from nothing else, the Kore checked her speed and was soon on the city's limits before her visibility was impeded utterly by the sandstorm.

As she approached the outermost building structure an odd sight caught her attention through the thick of the sandstorm. Momentarily distracted from her main objective by the thin shadows in the sandstorm, she pulled her motorcycle around to investigate. The Kore came to a halt within spitting distance of the ruined city but still could not rightly guess at the nature of the objects that had caught her attention through the thick of the howling storm.

Cautiously, she inched her motorcycle forward. Closer and closer she drew to the strange shapes and before she realized it, she had surrounded herself in the midst of the tall, pipe-like objects protruding haphazardly out of the red earth. The Kore's instincts snapped at her heart and chewed on her gut, inciting emotions of flight within her. She ignored and leaned in for a closer look to one that stood no more than an arms length away.

The sight that emerged from the biting sandstorm was of a grizzly affair.

_There's a killer on the road_

_His brain is squirmin' like a toad_

_Take a long holiday_

_Let your children play_

_If ya give this man a ride_

_Sweet memory will die_

_Killer on the road, yeah_

She gazed into the empty sockets of a severed head as it emerged into her view. Strips of muscle tissue and fur still clung to the skull, but mostly the Kore could gleam the yellowed bone beneath. The jowls of the skull hung open at a twisted angle, and for a second she forgot that it was the sandstorm that was screaming and not the skull itself.

Choking back on her own shriek, the Kore jerked back and took a second hard look around the surrounding terrain.

Guarding her path were metal spits varying some nine to twelve feet in height that had been stuck fast into the red earth. The sharp-tipped spits were separated at chaotic random intervals that, despite its whimful placement, formed a crude fence that carried off in either direction and eventually dissipated in to the curtains of the howling storm. Jammed on to each of these were the severed heads of Martians in varying states of decay. Some spits hosted as many as five to its length. The skulls that still boasted skin and patches of fur were frozen in the horrific grimace of their death throes. Others where flesh was less gaped out over the war torn landscape, their jowls dropped in an eternal scream.

She felt all of their eternally damned sightless sockets burrowing into her.

The Kore hesitated before trespassing. Subconsciously, her hand went to her neck.

_**BEEP!**_

She near jumped out of her fur coat when an electronic message blipped into existence on the lower right-hand corner of her helmet's internal screen. Glad beyond measure for the distraction, the Kore seized the opportunity to open the email. It read simply:

_:: Where are you? ::_

The Kore fixed on the words.

The answer to the question should have been easy enough. She should respond that she was lost and did not accurately know where she was at, but there was more to it than that. She was following enticing promises whispered to her by her fractured psyche–more precisely, broken memories–to a place that she did not remember.

Correction…

-No _longer_ remembered.

The Kore blinked. Then blinked again as her vision started to blur and mix the lines between the sandstorm raging all around her, the shadowy shapes of the City of Ruin before her, and the taunting shapes in her memory.

She suffered a sense of displacement and for a moment she was lost.

Looking around she tried to piece together the familiarity of the unfamiliar place. After a long moment she dredged up a partial psychic imprint of Malachite's glory days. The imagery was at best indistinct and at worst vaporous in nature, reminding her of an abstract artist's canvas of colors bleeding together. The sand-wrapped city echoed the memory in her mind, or perhaps it was the other way around.

She did grasp that Malachite –if this City of Ruin truly was that city– had been renowned for its military strength and formidable defenses. Now all that it had left were severed heads on spits and winds that swathed the city in a veil of red sand and grit. Broken walls and street debris passed as people in the sandstorm, while winds that forced their way around crumbling buildings and through exposed pipes echoed their lost voices.

The Kore blinked behind her visor, giving her head an experimental shake, uncertain for a space of time if all of this was real or if she had fallen into another psychic-induced stupor.

Suddenly, she knew then with what she should respond with:

–She was chasing ghosts.

The Captain would be furious if she responded with that.

Abruptly, another message flickered across her field screen.

_:: I told you to remain on the ship. ::_

Her hands clenched around the handlebars at the obvious reprimand.

She felt that it should have read: 'You should have remained within your shell.'

And then she snorted, roused and upset, and gunned the engine for the innumerable time. The golden crotch rocket roared to life beneath her, echoing her incited soul as she drove off recklessly into the ruins of Malachite, City of Ruin.

Alien impulse and hounding psychic imprints did not bring her to Malachite's carcass bones alone. Genuine curiosity had drawn her all the way out here.

When they had scanned over Malachite while making their initial pass of the planet from orbit, the Kore had been struck by a sudden psychic vision –a damaged imprint or memory. It was of a tall, dark kouros –a Martian male–who proposed to her a perplexing riddle:

_When in trouble seek the empty bottle_.

What did that even _mean_?

Not that she was in trouble now, but why find an empty bottle when you were in trouble? Was the riddle nothing more than a joke rather than a memorable warning? Was it a Martian saying that meant when in trouble, or having difficulties, drown them in alcohol –thereby deriving the meaning of the empty bottle mentioned in the saying? Or was the riddle something more important than a drunkard's catchy rhyme?

His misty image and the meaning behind his likable riddle hounded her ceaselessly, depriving her of sleep as she pondered endlessly over the faded memory. Who was he? How did she know him? Was he her father? A beloved uncle? Brother? Comrade? …Lover? Or was the mystery behind the kouros something as ridiculous as a favored celebrity figure of hers from her long elapsed past?

Other questions hounded her:

What had this place–Malachite–been to her? Her home? A significant battleground? A past vocational aspiration? A place where something important in her life had happened? Or was this City of Ruin nothing at all?

She had no answers for her questions and seriously doubted if she would ever get any. Certainty the rocks would not sprout mouths and explain things to her. And certainly there would be none among the Martians who would know her. The sheer chances of just one Martian recognizing her were astronomical and hardly worth the energy to hope for.

But then, she had never given much thought to chances, or reasoning, or much of anything else. The Kore dwelled entirely in the now of thought and lived out her life on a whim – which was more or less why she had allowed herself to follow an alien impulse that had led her to drive half-way across the distance of the dying world to explore the carcass of a crumbling city.

All of these questions she dwelled on in the matter of a few seconds. And as it were, the Kore had not gone very far into the city when suddenly her motorcycle's instruments flickered on and detected pulsating energy signatures coming from inside a reasonably intact structure that appeared as though it had once served a purpose as an apartment complex –though its upper layers had long since fallen away it had remained defiantly intact.

The golden motorcycle's readings and millisecond calculated logical conclusions to the existence of the small multitude of energy signatures were displayed on the Kore's field-screen. A single glance at the bike's likely reasoning for the energy signatures was enough for the Kore to shift course and drive headlong towards the building, hoping that the anomaly would shed light on her fractured memories. As she came upon the basalt wall she depressed a button on the right handlebar and suddenly the metal plating on the head of the motorcycle pulled away, folding into sub compartments to make way for a set of twin barrel rockets that launched from her motorcycle with a banshee's scream.

The stone wall exploded in a roaring blaze of vaporized mortar dust, loose rock chips, and flames. The Kore roared through the opening into an open-spaced lobby of the once high-scale apartment complex. Despite being unable to see clearly through the fall of dust and licking flames, her field-screen pinpointed the pulsating heat signatures on the first floor, ten in total. The heat signatures were humanoid in shape and fled away from the explosion. She realized that she had, despite all odds, discovered Martians.

The Kore disembarked her motorcycle and removed her helmet in perpetration to question the surviving locales.

Then the dust settled, and the flames dwindled, and she started when she grasped the danger she had just blasted in on.

Nine of the pulsating energy signatures were Raets, an ethnic portion of the Martian population known for their long noses, thick furless tails, and pointed wolf-like ears. Manner-wise they were regarded on the whole as a flighty people, changing allegiances as quick as the winds change direction.

The nine Raets occupying the decaying apartment complex were outfitted to their ghastly teeth in weapons. Alone the Kore identified most of the weapons they were packing as being illegal across more than half the seven scattered galaxies: Psi-Disruptor Wands meant to temporarily suspend higher brain functions in sentient species and, unfortunately, could prove particularly lethal among highly evolved physic-based species –such as Martians. They also carried Displacers, a hand-held gun that could rearrange the atoms of a person and literally turn them inside out. She also noted laser-edged knifes and utility belt compartments that likely contained other highly illegal substances, such as canisters of Subatomic Destabilizing Gel, for those instances when explosions would just draw too much attention.

The Illegals were stowed away in their belts, on their backs, and some stuffed into their sole-worn boots. For clothes they wore loose corsair garb of grey and brown coloration that was worn and grimy, covered in burn marks, bullet holes, and stains of varying assortment. A few of them were adorned with ear jewelry and rings, others had some capped teeth.

Collectively they were an ugly bunch, but only one caught her interest in the span it took her to do a customary glance of her situation.

The Raet that caught her attention stood towards the back of the group of the nine Raet gang. He stood near six-feet-five-inches, had a pair of bloodshot eyes and had a thick short-haired fur coat that was a smoky grey complexion with a grey-white tinge around his black lips. His left ear was adorned in a plethora of gold-plated earrings of varying shapes and sizes. Collectively she guessed there to be a minimum of twelve, though there could have been more. His clothes were sleek and form fitting, consisting of a rather simple shadow-grey one piece jumpsuit with matching black leather gloves and boots which reached to his elbows and knees respectfully. A belt of similar quality completed his image. He carried more or less the same equipment as the others, with the added sniper rifle and Plasma Rod strapped to his back and an Illegal Acid Spray Pistol tucked in his belt. She did not miss the familiar Short-Range Teleporter Wristband either, but overall the frustrating tool was rather mute compared to the rest of his gear.

The tenth occupant of the lobby was a young Mica kore whose features suggested she was of the more populous Cave Mica bloodline. The young kore was dressed in a simple red-brown colored dress, brown underpants, and scuffed brown leather boots, but the most significant item of her attire was the rope that bound her hands and feet together.

She lay crumbled on the floor with the Raet of some note-worth bent over her with a fistful of her blonde hair in his black leather gloved hand.

Bitter tears stained a set of dark trails in the fur. When she could see, her striking blue eyes locked with the Kore's hot pink ones, and in them she could see the young kore pleading with her, begging her for assistance, to run, to be kind and end her misery, to escape while she could -for many things and contradictory things.

In the shocked, uncertain silence that clenched the two groups momentarily there could be heard the eerie strains of _Riders on the Storm_ carrying on unimpeded_:_

_Girl ya gotta love your man_

_Girl ya gotta love your man_

_Take him by the hand_

_Make him understand_

_The world on you depends_

_Life will never end_

_Gotta love your man, yeah_

As the moment of surprise came and passed, the Raet clutching the blonde-haired kore blinked and then blinked again. His mouth dropped open, attempted words and failed. The Kore decided to kick off the greetings by tossing her helmet over her shoulder and swaggering further into the lobby. She stopped in the midst of the dangerous Raets and pointed a long-nailed finger at the blonde-haired kore.

"Release her."

The Raet at the back nearly burst out laughing at her demand. "Whose gonna make me gorgeous, you?"

"That's right."

The Raet tried to suppress a chuckle and failed. "Boys, grab her!"

She emitted a squeak of surprise when three gang members lunged for her, taking her down in a dog pile. She went down hard and tasted the cold, grimy cement floor.

Hands groped her as they pinned her. One of the Raets grabbed a fistful of her long, thick white hair and yanked hard so that she was forced to turn her face to his ugly, long-nosed one. His grin revealed a mouth full of hideously decayed teeth –some yellow, some black, some broken, and a lot missing. His breath was as detestable as a Plutarkian's stink, and the Kore wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell.

"Ohoowoohoo! You're a lovely one!"

"Delicious." Added her other assailant with a lick of his lips.

"Heya, Mace!" said the Raet with the bad teeth as he grabbed at her muzzle with his free hand and turned her head so that Mace could see her. The Raet laid his head next to hers as he went on to say, "What ya think? Beautiful for a Mica, no?"

Mace brazenly examined the fiercely struggling Kore with a lewd eye then the weeping kore beside him. He yanked back on the young kore's blonde hair, eliciting a cry from her. His eyes swept over her tear-stained face before skipping over to the newest Kore. At length a leer settled over his face.

"She makes this one look plain. I want her. You can have this one."

"But we –"

"YEEEAHHUUUUGH!"

Startled by the scream from their companion, the Raets leapt away from the source, unintentionally releasing the red-garbed Kore.

Looking back, they soon discovered the reason for their gang member's scream.

The white-furred Kore had sunken her teeth into the hand of the Raet with the mouth full of foul smelling bad teeth. Blood spurted freely from the wound, soaking her muzzle, his hand, and dribbling on the floor around them. Desperately the Raet tried to pull away from the white-furred Kore but it was like trying to shake off an Earth Pit Bull after it had bitten down. The more that the Raet struggled the more the Kore held on.

"_**Shit**_!" Shrieked a gang member.

"_Ari-Kal!"_

"Rottooth!"

"AHAAAIEEEEEE!"  
Splintering bone crackled through the air. With an earsplitting scream that put the others to shame, the Raet flew back from the Kore like a snapped rubber band and collapsed to the floor. Weeping howling cries and screaming half-formed curses, he cradled his hand with all four remaining fingers closely to his chest.

Gaping in horror, his fellow gang members jumped from their cohort's gushing, mutilated hand and quickly glanced to the Kore in the tattered red shirt. It seemed only now that they took serious note of her attire composed as it were of a black, scaly hide material that composed most of her clothing or, more alarming yet, the pieces of bone dangling ominously from her ears.

The barbaric Kore had climbed to her feet where she struck a savage pose. Her breathing came hitched, rasping, as the blood from the Raet dripped from her muzzle and scattered through the air like droplets of crimson rain when she blew too hard. She flexed her fingers like claws as she lashed her tail through the air like a whip. Though the headlights from her golden racing bike silhouetted her in darkness, her eyes glinted fiercely in the low light provided further inside the lobby like dancing pink flames.

"You b-bitch!" wailed Rottooth, gripped in the throes of system shock. "Y-you fucking bitch! Why'd ya take my finger! Give me my finger back!"

_Phowff!_

The blonde-haired kore let loose a scream when the savage blood-smeared Kore spat out Rottooth's finger and sent it bouncing off the stunned Raet's forehead before it hit the ground.

It was only in that moment that they realized what had come crashing upon them form the wailing sandstorm beyond their walls.

"Feaal…!"

Visibly shaken, the Raet nearest the Feaal tried to retreat, suddenly realizing the great danger that he was in, but it was too late. They could see that a primeval force had risen from the depths of her blood. Even then, a crimson veil was settling over her eyes as her most primeval animalistic instincts seized control. Tasting the sudden, stark fear spilling off from the Raet's only cemented her swift surrender to the rising forces within.

Quick as a shot, she snatched up two steel batons strapped to her back. With a deft twist of her wrists she twirled the batons and broke their plated heads against the cement floor. With a pop and crackle, the baton heads burst to life in a shower of sparks. The Raets were momentarily blinded by the sudden brilliance and backed further away, and it was this moment that the Kore seized upon.

With a bloodcurdling scream that froze the murdering Raet's to their spots, the Feaal lunged and drove the sparking steel rod flare through the chest of the closest Raet. His death cry became a sickening gurgle when she sank her teeth deep into his throat and viciously tore it out.

At that moment the atmosphere was rent with panicked screams and shouts of 'Feaal!'

Quick as a survival instinct, the Raet's pulled their Displacers from their holsters and ushered a hail of laserfire on the Feaal. Under the hail of fire, the strains of the _Doors: Riders on the Storm_ continued:

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

_Into this house we're born_

_Into this world we're thrown_

_Like a dog without a bone_

_An actor out alone_

_Riders on the storm_

Further panic erupted among the Raets when their volley of laser fire was debunked and dissipated a foot before reaching the Feaal. Mace recognized that the golden crotch rocket was projecting a force field around its rider, but as alarming a development as it was he was just as equally stunned when he recognized that the motorcycle was operating and standing on its own.

"An A.I.!"

The rush of discovering the rare Martian treasure was spoiled by the shocking realization that the Martian A.I. Bike had bonded itself with a Feaal.

In as little time as it took him to register the lack of their weapons effectiveness against the force field projected by the A.I. Bike, the Feaal had killed two more of his Raets, dispatching both by burning their faces off with the sparking end of her batons.

Mace's theory about the A.I. Bike was only further cemented when one of his remaining members attempted to go after the Feaal with his laser-edged knife. He did not make it more than three steps. Mace observed as laser cannons folded out from subcompartments beneath the rear-view mirrors and shot the Raet dead.

At that moment Rottooth decided he had had enough and scurried across the floor, seeking cover. Mace took a pop shot off at the coward with his Displacer and was rewarded with a high-pitched shriek. He didn't bother to inspect on his damage as he slipped further to the back of the lobby himself, using the blonde-haired kore as a shield.

He was down to just four meat shields left between himself and the crazed Feaal with the overprotective A.I. Bike, Mace decided it was time he cut his losses. Without a word to his surviving comrades, Mace shoved the kore towards the fight and teleported out, just as the A.I. Bike eliminated the remaining Raets with extreme prejudice and took a shot at him, which missed as he just teleported.

And still the song played on:

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

_Riders on the storm_

The Feaal turned on the young kore she had just saved only to find that the plain girl was scrambling across the floor to distance herself from the savage killer.

The Feaal started after her at a slow, purposeful gait.

The kore spotted her and snapped like a used rubber band. She curled in on herself, her whole body shuddering from nerves as she said in a pitiful, broken voice: "P-please," she begged, her attention transfixed to the bits of bone adorning the Kore like so much priceless jewelry. "Don't kill me. I-I'll get you anything you want. My grandmamma owns a bar. We have food, a-and water! A-and I can get you shelter from the storm."

The Kore spat out Rottooth's blood.

"Don't need it."

"I'm not lying!" The simpering kore choked back on a wail of rising panic and repeated squeakily, "I'm not lying! I'm P-P-Primer, daughter of Marra, daughter of Bodda, owner and proprietor of The Empty Bottle Inn and Bar!"

The Feaal jerked to a stop three yards from her. Recognition dawned on her face. Her lips moved, echoing words that Primer had undoubtedly just spoken, but she could not make them out.

_When in trouble seek The Empty Bottle._

Cute.

Primer seized on her advantage for her life's sake, recognizing that she had just bought herself some precious time. "What's your name, stranger?"

The Feaal with the strong Cave Mica blood turned her fire-bright eyes on her as she twirled the flares, drawing dazzling and distracting circles through the air.

"Wildfire."

"Wildfire," Primer repeated shakily, her eyes passively following the twirl of the flare rods. The name fit the feral Kore that had literally exploded into her life. "Well Wildfire, where do you hail from and from whom?"

"Nowhere and far away."

Primer retained a healthy level of fear for this kore though she was beginning to doubt her intellect. The way she spoke made her uncle Modo seem like a professor. Then perhaps it was a ruse, or an accent, though she doubted it. Whatever the case, she pressed for some clue as to whom she was dealing with.

"Are you with one of the tribes from the south?"

"No."

"Then the Fraal of Ari-Kal." She quickly said, dreading a positive response as she fished for clues to whom it was she was dealing with exactly and what that would mean for her unparticular.

"Who?" and the Kore kicked a bit of fallen mortar.

"You're a mercenary then, from Lord Stilton." Primer concluded. There could be no other explanation.

The Feaal said nothing as she looked around.

Primer licked her dry lips, taking the silence for a positive response. It all fit really, the clothing, the high-tech bike and gear, definitely the attire of the more grisly mercenary quality.

"I can help you find who you're looking for."

The Feaal threw Primer a long, interested look.

Primer's heart soared in her breast. There existed a chance she could get out of this alive. "Who were you sent to find?"  
The Feaal turned her eyes away from Primer as she inspected the ceiling over, though Primer did not think that she really was. After a while, she finally replied slowly and purposefully, "There is a name that keeps echoing inside my mind."

Primer ignored her strange reply and pressed for the answers that would spare her life.

"What is it?"  
Lord Stilton's latest mercenary snapped her gaze back to Primer.

"Stoker."

Primer's heart plummeted in her breast and unbidden her mouth parted.

"You know this name?" As she spoke, her flare rods sparked and began to fizzle out.

Primer tried to get her mouth to work, failed, and then nodded her head vigorously. "Yes." She rasped, finding her throat suddenly tight. "Yes!" She declared louder and wondered secondly if this was how others became traitors, "I-I know him."

The flare rods fizzled out, casting Primer into shadow and leaving Wildfire bathed solely in the pale glow of her crotch rocket's headlights.

"A-and what's more," she continued tentatively, "I-I can take you too him!"

A smile curled the blood-stained lips of the Feaal.


End file.
